Is Health Care the Democrats' TABOR?

By Christian Schneider

“It's time for all of us to develop a solution. The Republicans in control of the Legislature must change their can't-do attitude. Our plan sets the goals and the timeframe. It will be up to legislators of both parties to work out the details. The first step is for the Legislature to make affordable health care a priority.”

-Senate Minority Leader Judy Robson, November 29, 2005

During the recent four years Republicans held both houses of the Wisconsin Legislature,  blood ran through the streets of the dairy state.  Health care was impossible to come by, and the confused elderly were left alone to wander the streets (although inexplicably still able to make it in droves to 4 P.M. Friday fish fries.)  People were finding severed limbs in their grocery baskets.  Combovers remained an acceptable hairstyle.  There was no end to the statewide nightmare.

For four years, nary a day went by in the Wisconsin Legislature without Republicans being lectured on how they were thwarting forward-thinking advances in health care.  When Democrats were in power, they were told, citizens would be spared the injustice of having to pay insurance companies to provide them service.  That is, the 49% of citizens with health insurance in Wisconsin that don’t already have their health insurance paid for in some way by the government.

Senate and Assembly Democrats rolled out plan after plan to provide more citizens with government-funded health care, and hammered Republicans for not bringing the bills to the floor for votes.  Often times, Democrats would try procedural maneuvers to force floor votes on their plans.  One proposal created an expansive universal health care system in Wisconsin.  Another taxed employers to pay for those benefits.  All cost billions of dollars to implement.  The price tag was worth it, Republicans were told, because people were hurting.

Yet in November of 2006, a medical miracle took place – suddenly, Wisconsin became a lot healthier state.  Immediately, the elderly didn’t have to eat dog food in order to afford their health care.  In one day, all the sick and dying rose from their hospital beds and resumed their pinochle games, crossword puzzles, and complaints about the weather.   Was there some medical breakthrough that turned centuries of scientific research on its head to cure all these people?  What could have possibly happened to solve the health care conundrum in Wisconsin?

Democrats won.

Following the November election, now-Majority leader Judy Robson credited the health care issue with putting Senate Democrats in the majority, as her candidates were dedicated to “making sure families have affordable health care.”  Yet four months into this legislative session, Democrats have yet to bring a health care proposal to the floor of the Senate.  The first bill Democrats scheduled for floor action?  Correcting the injustice of Wisconsin law not allowing 17 year olds to vote.

Saddled with the burden of now actually having to govern, the health care issue has ground the Senate Democratic caucus to a halt.  Bills drafted as election talking points in past sessions have now been blocked by the same Democratic senators that fought for their passage less than a year ago.  After four years of drafting and research, it is clear that they don’t have a plan – when asked where their proposal was, Joint Finance Committee chairman Russ Decker pointed to a provision in Governor Jim Doyle’s budget that simply expands the current Medicaid program to cover children.

The health care issue presents a variety of problems for Democrats, which is why all of Wisconsin’s “hurting families” have now taken a back seat to inter-caucus politics.  First, if Democrats were to pass a universal-type of health plan, it would take away their pet campaign issue.  It is becoming clear that for Senate Democrats, having the election issue is more important than actually having a plan.

For decades, Democrats have been able to beat Republicans over the head with the health care issue, portraying conservatives as mean-spirited for questioning the increased use of tax dollars to fund medical care.  If an expansive universal-type health plan were to pass, how would Democrats continue to use the issue to win elections?  They would be willingly denying their candidates their bread and butter issue.

For Democrats, passing universal health care would be like Brad Pitt moving into your house. Suddenly, you become irrelevant. Before you know it, he’s wearing your clothes, eating your frozen pizzas, and your wife is traveling the world adopting Thai kids. Meanwhile, you’re stuck at home, late at night, staring bleary-eyed at Cinemax and hoping to God you don’t recognize any of the actresses’ names in the next movie that’s on.  Voters will have forgotten what they need Democrats for.

Secondly, if a universal-type health plan were to pass, suddenly citizens would start to recognize the downside of such an expansive new framework.  The cracks in the plans would actually start to show.  Long waiting lists and substandard quality of care would become major issues, as would sick people from other states flooding Wisconsin’s system.  Suddenly, voters may not be giving Democrats much credit when grandma has to wait a year for hip replacement surgery.

Legislative Republicans went through a similar high-profile meltdown in recent years with the highly publicized Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) debacle.  After taking control of both houses of the Legislature in 2002, a movement began to amend the Wisconsin Constitution to cap local and state taxes and spending.  The bill badly fractured legislative Republicans, and led to some well-publicized and embarrassing episodes on the floor of the Senate.  It even cost the sitting Senate Majority Leader her job.

After four years of promising to take action, no meaningful version of TABOR ever made it to state voters for approval, despite Republican promises to get it done.  Some Republican legislators questioned the wisdom of taking the tax issue off the table for future Republican candidates.  If Republicans couldn’t run on keeping taxes down, Republican majorities could be a thing of the past, some argued.

This line of argument wasn’t without merit.  Colorado had once been a strong Republican state, until they passed their own TABOR. Until 2004, Democrats hadn’t held both houses of their legislature in 44 years. Since 1963, Democrats have had a majority in one chamber or the other only three times, and they've never held on to it more than two years.

In 2004, while Republicans were increasing majorities around the nation, the Colorado Senate flipped from a one vote Republican majority to a one vote Democratic majority. The Colorado House flipped all the way from a 37-28 Republican majority to a 34-31 majority for the Democrats. Democrats in Colorado even gained a U.S. Senate seat.

Similarly, California once was a hotbed of conservatism, having given birth to Ronald Reagan’s political career.  Yet in the early 1970’s, voters approved constitutional tax caps, which rendered Republicans obsolete.  Now California is a banana republic, where voters are often asked to weigh a candidate’s knowledge of government versus their opponent’s willingness to have sex with men on camera.

Wisconsin Democrats could find themselves in a similar situation with health care.  In fact, Democrats are so devoid of new ideas on health care that they hitched their star to the hysterically titled “Action Plan for Affordable Health Care” bill last session.  The bill merely required that the Legislature pass a bill that made sure 98% of Wisconsin residents had insurance and that health care expenditures were brought down by 15% by 2010.  And what suggestions did the bill offer up to achieve these goals?  Well…none.  The bill didn’t contain any actual plan for achieving these goals – it simply set a goal without saying how to get there.  And this was actually the bill Robson pushed as the Democratic health plan during the 2006 elections, and apparently did so without bursting into laughter.  This session, I'm looking forward to a bill requiring that I be three inches taller by 2008.

While Wisconsin's uninsured will be happy to know that they're not nearly as sick as they once thought, it will still be a long time before they see meaningful health care relief.  In the short term, the infirmed will have to make do with Governor Doyle's budget plan to cut their health care costs by making it more expensive to go to a hospital.  At the same time, Democrats will continue to fight any consumer-based health reform that could actually keep health costs down, since they know if Republicans actually demonstrate that those plans work, it will neuter their election year high-road issue.

So the next time that you have a medical problem, don't even bother calling a doctor or ordering up a batch of stem cells.  Get on the phone with Judy Robson - a larger Democratic majority in the Senate should clear that rash up in no time.